Joseph N. DiStefano

Posted:
Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 12:54 PM

As I reported last week - though the principals weren't saying anything publicly - Brandywine Realty Trust, Radnor, put out a statement last night confirming it has joined Campus Crest Communities to build a high-rise student tower at 2930 Chestnut St. on ground leased from the University of Pennsylvania.

The joint venture - 40% owned by investor Harrison Street Real Estate, the rest split by Brandywine and Campus Crest - will rise 33 stories (the site is permitted for 36), sleep 850 students (not counting guests), and cost $158.5 million (with $97.8 million lent by banks led by administrator PNC and syndicator Capital One).

Brandywine expects Drexel students as well as Penn students will live in the tower, dubbed The Grove at Cira Center South (Cira North is the office building by 30th St. Station). The building would draw students toward the campus neighborhood and away from the West Philly and Center City housing where they've been proliferating for decades.

Campus Crest is based in Charlotte. An earlier version of this item wrongly said it was based in Georgia.

PhillyDeals posts raw drafts and updates of Joseph N. DiStefano's columns and stories about Philly-area finance, investment, commercial real estate, tech, hiring and public spending, which he's been writing since 1989, mostly for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

DiStefano studied economics, history and a little engineering at Penn,
taught writing at St. Joe's, and has written the book Comcasted, more
than a thousand columns, and thousands of articles, and raised six
children with his wife, who is a saint.